Chapter 5

Comments On Human Generation

812. We can now make a few comments on human generation. We have already described how animal propagation and multiplication very probably take place.

Human generation exhibits the same external phenomena as the generation of other animals. It seems impossible to doubt therefore that human beings as animals are subject to animal laws of propagation. But in the human being intelligence as well as animality is present. The difficulty consists in explaining the origin of the former.

Let us recall the teaching we have established relative to our present investigation:

1st. Because the human subject is a feeling-intellective principle, it necessarily exists simultaneously with the matter of its feeling and with the object of its intelligence (being), both of which are posited simultaneously by nature;(365)

2nd. If the matter of feeling and the object of intuition ceased, the human subject and all its elements would cease;

3rd. If only the matter of feeling ceased, the human subject would change into a merely intellective subject;

4th. If, on the contrary, the object ceased, leaving only the matter, the human subject would become a purely feeling or animal subject.

813. Before continuing, it will be helpful to observe that, although the human subject would lose its identity if the object (being) were removed, an element would still remain despite the destruction of the human subject. The proposition has two parts:

1st. `The feeling principle remaining after the removal of the object of intelligence (being) would not retain its identity with the preceding feeling principle.'

The truth of this will be seen by anyone who considers the relationship between the animal principle and the human principle or subject. The word `principle' properly speaking expresses the higher, intelligent principle(366) because the intellective endowment is the substantial basis of what is human. Feeling activity, therefore, does not have the true nature of principle in the human being while he exists. Only the intelligent, reasoning activity, which ceases as soon as the object is removed, has this nature. The feeling activity, which is not removed but remains alone when the object is taken away, does however take on the nature of principle because 1. there is nothing superior to it, and 2. feeling originates from it.

814. 2nd. `Although the identity of the subject is no longer present once the natural object of the intelligent spirit has been removed from the human being, an element of it does remain.'

If we compare the human being with what remains after the hypothetical removal of the object of his intelligence, we find no change in the material feeling. It is true that this feeling cannot be called a human subject, but we are not prevented from considering it as the matter of the human subject which, in order to become a subject again, needs only the restoration of its form.

815. Granted these teachings as proven or accepted, let us see if we can successfully investigate the more general laws governing human generation. Relative to the multiplication of the animal element, the investigation, as we have said, presents no difficulty. The animal element can be understood to multiply as other animals do. The difficulty consists in explaining how this animal element, this feeling principle, is raised to the level of intellective soul,(367) and consequently to the level of a soul which survives the loss of all its corporeal matter.

Note, we are not asking how the feeling principle can, of itself and without the intervention of the Creator, rise to the level of intellective soul. Such a question would be absurd: there is no doubt that the hand of the Creator is necessary for the origin of an intelligent soul. This fact is beyond discussion. We are concerned with the beginning of a new intellective soul not relative to God who creates it, but relative to the soul that is created. We are asking `whether in the soul placed in existence by the Creator there are any laws or steps, as it were, taken by the soul towards its complete subsistence'. We want to indicate these laws and steps.

816. Keeping within the limits of the question, we first say that what is animate is already present in nature. We have indeed attempted to give some explanation of its multiplication and its movement to perfection, but never of its origin. We took subsistent, animate reality as a basic fact explained only by Genesis, not by philosophy. The subsistence of the human being is another fact also explained in Genesis where we read: `The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.'(368)

Animate reality and the human being, therefore, are facts. Their origin is the origin of the world. And first facts, as we know, are not explained but used in the explanation of subsequent facts.

If we now compare the human being and the animal and look for the source of the human being's superiority to the animal, we find that the former is intellective as well as feeling; intelligence is the difference between the human and animal subjects. Let us therefore investigate the nature of this difference and try to discover its ultimate composition.

We have repeatedly said that a feeling subject necessarily becomes intelligent when the intuition of being is added to it. The difference therefore consists in the intuition of being given to a human, feeling subject but not to a brute-feeling subject. Consequently, the existence of the intellective subject is created by the object when this manifests itself to the subject. If we simply keep to fact and ignore hypothesis, it is certain that simultaneously with the intuition of being we must also grant an intelligent subject in such a way that intelligence is necessarily conceived and arises contemporaneously with the vision of being. No matter how mysterious the case may be, analysis of the intelligent subject gives the following result: if being is removed, the intelligent subject disappears; if being is made visible, the subject returns at once. We thus arrive at an extraordinary truth, that `ideal being has the power to manifest itself, and that its manifestation is therefore one and the same as the creation of an intuiting subject'.(369) Prior to the intuition, no principle can be assigned to the subject (unless we introduce gratuitous hypotheses), but simultaneously with the intuition an intuiting and therefore intelligent principle is found.

817. Consequently, when matter and idea are removed from the principle or subject, all that remains is a kind of indeterminate possibility, that is, the first matter of which earlier writers spoke. According to them this matter, although it had not yet received any form, was capable of receiving every form; it was matter in potency, and nothing more.

Such matter certainly does not exist in itself; it is nothing, and to draw things from it is truly to draw them from nothing.

818. It may be objected that the human being, in addition to feeling and intelligence, also possesses activity, or instinct, and the feeling of this activity. But what we have said demonstrates that every activity is contained like a seed in the first act by which the subject feels and intuits.

819. We must now explain how the animal, which multiplies according to the laws of physical generation, finds the object or being on which it can gaze and so obtain the light of the intellect. The feeling principle is touched, as it were, by the object, that is, being makes itself intuited by the principle. This contact and union raises to a much higher state the feeling principle that now intuits; the principle changes its nature, becoming intellective, subsistent, immortal. In short, the principle shares the sublime qualities of the object with which it is now indivisibly united.

820. The human soul therefore is `a feeling principle which has being in general as the term of its feeling'. Being in general is eternal and simple, outside place and time, and it is clear that the soul, united immovably to being, participates in all these noble prerogatives of being.(370)

821. The whole problem therefore is reduced to indicating the law according to which a feeling subject which has matter as the term of its feeling also begins to have being in general as the term of its feeling.

We must first bear in mind that the object of intelligence, ideal being, is one and the same for all human beings, who are enlightened by it.(371)

Second, we must remember that the union of being with the subject is given by nature. Human nature, therefore, which is the union of being with a feeling, corporeal principle, is also given by nature. We simply want to know how this human nature, this basic union between being and the sentient, corporeal principle, is propagated in many individuals of the same nature.

Ideal being shines as one and identical before all intelligences, which it creates, and therefore does not need to be multiplied. It is enough that the individuals of human nature, to which being is bound, are propagated and multiplied; being will then shine immediately before each new individual belonging to human nature.

Taking as basic facts that 1. being is bound to human nature, and 2. being is bound according to the law that every individual of this nature shall see being, it is clear that the manner of multiplication of human beings will be found as soon as we find how the individual principles of animal nature multiply.

822. Now, there can be no contradiction or difficulty in admitting that God constituted such a law from the beginning. The law was necessary if human nature was to have all it needed for development.

823. Indeed, the law constituted by God that `being in general is always visible to every new individual issuing from human nature by means of animal generation' is fully in harmony with the customary manner of divine operation which follows fixed laws.

824. This way of conceiving the multiplication of human beings is also found to be in full accord with the words of Genesis, and with the constant opinion of Church tradition that `in creating the first human being, God not only gave origin to an individual, but in that individual instituted the whole of human nature and the human species'. This must apparently be understood to mean that `God, in the first operation and formation of the human being, constituted the laws which govern all human nature and the human species'.

825. This way of understanding the well-known passage in Genesis where the infusion of the soul into the human being is described (translated by the Vulgate as `breathed into his face the breath of life')(372) conforms fully to the letter of the Hebrew text, which instead of `the breath of life', says in the plural `the breath of lives'. Thus the spirit infused into the first human being was intended to communicate life to others without being limited to the one life alone, just as the title `tree of lives' was given to what was intended to preserve the lives of all the human beings who ate of its fruit.

826. This interpretation conforms, as we said, to the constant expressions of the Fathers. They apply to the origin of our soul everything God did in creating the first human being. Lactantius says: `(God) formed the body and infused the soul BY WHICH WE LIVE.'(373)

In the same way, St Athanasius, describing the creation of the first human being, says: `God, maker of the world, formed through his Word the human race in his own image, and gave it (the human race) understanding, and knowledge of his eternity.'(374) And a little further on: `Hence, the maker of things wished that the human race which he had founded should continue as he founded it.'(375) According to these passages, God imparted the light of the intellect not only to Adam when he created him, but at the same time and with the same act to all Adam's descendants.

St. Basil also speaks of the creation of the first ancestor as the foundation constituting human nature: `The human being is certainly a wonderful thing; he has received something of great value from his natural constitution. Amongst the things we see on earth, what else was made in the image of the Creator?'(376) Here we see that `human being' is taken to mean human nature, not simply one individual of this nature.

Gregory Nazianzen also sees the whole of humanity in Adam: `Because the Creator-Word wishes to demonstrate this, he makes the human being a unique animal by uniting visible and invisible nature.'(377)

Gregory of Nyssa has written a entire treatise on the making of the human being, in which we clearly see how little he deals with the creation of the individual. The principal object of his meditations is human nature instituted in the first individual.

St. John Chrysostom applies to all human beings the words `Let us make man to our image and likeness': `Just as he said image because of our source, he also said likeness, in order that we may render ourselves like God according to human forces.'(378)

Cyril of Alexandria also speaks of Adam as human nature: `This animal, completed by God the Creator with all the conditions proper to its own nature, was immediately endowed with the divine likeness.' And a little further: `After losing the grace of God and being despoiled of the good with which it had been enriched at the beginning, human nature was banished from the paradise of delights and became deformed.'(379)

St. Augustine says expressly that the human race was `as it were radically instituted in Adam'.(380) He says that we were all in Adam, indeed we were the single Adam, because `if the form in which we lived as individuals was not yet individually created and distributed, nevertheless the seminal nature from which we were propagated was present.'(381) Once again, Adam was certainly a human being, but this human being `was the whole human race'(382). Finally, all were in Adam's loins by means of the seed.(383)

827. Eadmer, a pupil of St. Anselm, sees his own nature already formed in the likeness of God at the beginning of the world. He says: `My (some read our) nature was created at the beginning in the likeness of God.'(384) In another place he says: `As we show that (human nature) must have been created in justice, so we show that those who might have been propagated without a preceding sin would necessarily receive justice simultaneously with rationality. For it is clear that he who created the first human being without parental generation, also creates all those who are to be propagated from that first parent by means of created nature.'(385)

828. Moreover, theologians generally argue to the gifts and knowledge with which God must have endowed Adam from the fact that Adam was not only an individual but also head of the human race.(386)

829. But St. Paul himself, even before the Fathers and theologians, sees human nature founded in the first human being: all descendants are in the first human being in whom, he says, all have sinned and all have died.(387)

Hence, Catholic doctrine consistently teaches that human nature itself sinned in Adam and fell in the first parent.(388) If the first parent sinned and human nature fell in him, that is, all human beings perished in Adam, why should we not believe that all are founded in him and begin to exist in virtue of that very act of creation by which God made and gave life to the first parent? We are not saying that all human beings existed at that time; we are saying they come into existence in virtue of that act.

I believe that the law I am discussing was established in the act (the single breath of life) mentioned by Genesis when it says God breathed the breath of life into the figure formed of earth. By this law, ideal being, the intellective light, is united to every individual of human nature. Here we have the origin of intelligence, the creation of all the intelligent souls that inform new individuals at the moment of their generation.

830. This explains why Job in his search for the origin of human intelligence turns to the first breath of life. When he says: `There is a spirit in men, and the inspiration of the Almighty gives understanding',(389) he is obviously referring to the Genesis account of the animation of the first human being.

In the breath of life mentioned in Genesis, the Fathers also see and admit the principle of intelligence, not only of Adam but of all human beings without exception.

St Basil says: `Human beings possess a power by which they can know and understand their Creator and Maker. The Creator breathed into him, that is, added to the human being a part of his own grace so that by means of this likeness formed in him the human being might know him to whom he had been made alike.'(390)

St. Gregory Nazianzen also explains the breath of life as intellectual light added immovably to human nature.(391)

Gregory of Nyssa observes that, just as the matter of human nature was instituted when God made the figure from earth, so the form was given in the breath.(392) John Damascene, following the steps of the earliest authors, is careful to explain the origin of the material and spiritual parts of the human being in the same way.(393)

Let us conclude. The constant opinion of Church tradition is that when God created the first human being, he laid down the unchangeable, constituent elements of human nature. One of these constituent elements is that every individual of human nature intuits being. Thus, when the Almighty breathed the breath of life into the first human being, he simultaneously enacted the law that `ideal being be manifested to every new individual of the human species'. He then willed that multiplication of human individuals should take place through the action of humans themselves by means of generation. Thus, the statement that after six days `he rested from all the work he had done' is completely verified.(394)

831. Two causes, therefore, concur simultaneously in the generation of a new individual of the human race: the human being with generation, and God with the manifestation of his light. The human being posits the animal, and God creates the intelligent soul at the very moment the human animal is posited. He makes the soul intelligent by enlightening it with the splendour of his face and sharing with it part of himself, ideal being, light of all intelligent creatures.

(365) This teaching is expressly taught by St. Thomas, who writes: `Animal signifies that which has a feeling nature; rational is that which has an intellective nature. The human being has both' (S.T., I, q. 85, art. 5, ad 3).

(366) St. Thomas says: `The human being is that which is according to reason' (S.T., III, q. 19, art. 2). The fact that the intelligent subject considers sensations while the feeling principle does not consider ideas shows the intelligent principle to be the higher of the two. Hence, the natural order between sensations and ideas, between feeling activity and intellective activity. Intellective activity is superior to feeling activity, that is, to sensations, which it does not form but beholds as already formed, dominating them as something different from and inferior to itself.

(367) Saying that `the feeling principle is raised to the state of intellective soul' does not mean in any way that a purely feeling principle has preceded the intellective soul in time. We are not dividing time-wise that which feels from that which is humanly intellective (both can in fact be contemporaneous); we are indicating precedence solely in the order of concepts.

(368) Gen 2: [7].

(369) In manifesting itself, being suffers no change; all change is relative to the intuiting subject.

(370) If the soul were detached from its object, it would no longer conform to the definition and would cease to be soul. It would be annihilated, and we would rightly consider its annihilation opposed to the perfections of the Creator. - Earlier teaching, which is to be found principally in the books of the Platonists, agrees with what we are saying, but it needs to be stripped of its arcane, mysterious and false language. At the beginning of `Mysteries', attributed to Jamblicus, we read: `Our being is to know God' (here God should be understood as idea of being because the platonic gods were ideas) `since the principal element of the soul is its intellect, in which existence and the understanding of divine things (ideas) is a single reality having an enduring act. The powers of the soul are derived by reasoning from this principal existence.'

(371) The identity of the truth known by the human understanding, was the cause of the great error of the famous Arab who `commentary made'. He falsely argued that a single intellect is common to all human beings. But intellects are many, not because the object (being) is not the one, identical being seen by all humans, but because the subjects seeing the same object are many. Thus, everyone has a different subjective intuition of the same object. St. Thomas, who agrees with this teaching, admits the identity of the object (being, truth) seen by all human beings, but rejects the unity of the intellect suggested by the Averroists. The Saint's precision when discussing Averroes' opinion is shown by the following words: `This opinion is true in so far as the identity of the same knowledge in teacher and pupil is considered according to the unity of the thing known: the same truth is known by both teacher and pupil. But, as we said above, the opinion is false in so far it posits one possible intellect for all human beings' (S.T., I, q. 117, art. 1, corp.). The unity and identity of the truth, which is intuited by all the human beings that have existed, exist now and will exist throughout the whole world, and intuited by all the intelligences of the universe, has been demonstrated by me in Rinnovamento etc., bk. 3, cc. 44 and 45.

(372) Gen 2: 7 [Douai].

(373) DD. 2, 2, 12.

(374) Orat. contra gentes.

(375) Ibid..

(376) Homilia in Psal. 48.

(377) Orat. 42 [45] which is Orat. 2 de Pascha.

(378) Homil. 9 in Genes.

(379) De adorat. in spir. et verit., bk. 1.

(380) De Gen. ad litt., bk. 6, 11.

(381) `We were all in the one human being when we all constituted that being who fell into sin through the woman who, before sin, had been made from that being. The form in which we were to live as individuals had not yet been individually created and distributed to us. But seminal nature from which we were to be propagated existed as a nature disordered because of sin, held by the bond of death, and justly condemned. This was the only natural condition in which a human being would be born from a human being (De Civ. Dei, 13, 14).

(382) In Jo. Tract., 11, 2 [10, 11].

(383) `By means of the seed, human beings were in the loins of Adam when he was condemned. Thus, he was not condemned without them. Just as the Israelites were in the loins of Abraham when he was chosen, so Abraham was not chosen without them.' In order to show that he drew his teaching from Scripture, he continues against Julian: `Those who said these things knew better than you the meaning of the seed, and were careful to send letters to be read in the Church of Christ, where those born of Adam are reborn, lest they remain condemned in that line' (Op. imperf. contra Jul., 5, 12). He repeats this in many other places. The following will serve as an example: `The (children) also acted in this parent because they were in him when he acted; he and they were still one. Thus, they did not act as human beings do, but by reason of their seed. You try to hide what has been said so clearly by him who wrote: "As sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned". He knew that what is sometimes seen in diseases of the body had been perpetrated in that ancient, great sin of the one first parent, in that sin by which the whole of human nature was disordered' (Op. imperf. contra Jul., 2, 177 [5, 12]).

(384) De excell. Mar. Virg., c. 9).

(385) De conceptu. Vir. et orig. pecc., c. 10.

(386) Alexander of Hales uses this argument where he says: `Adam had full knowledge. If it is fitting for God to carry out perfect works, how much more fitting is it to make perfect in nature him who is the origin of the whole race and, in a certain way, the end of all?' (Summa, part 2, q. 92). A little further on he calls Adam `father, beginning and seedbearer of the whole human race'. St. Thomas also shows that our first parents had to be taught by God. He begins from the principle that `the first parents were instructed by God not only as individual persons but as the beginnings of all the human nature which was passed on from them to their descendants' (S.T., II-II, q. 164, art. 1, ad 3). This is the common teaching of all Catholic theologians.

(387) Rom 5: [12]; [1] Cor 15: [22].

(388) `Life, damaged by various passions, came to a human nature initially and totally bereft of divine benefits and destined to corruptible death. Erring (human nature), having turned from following the right road that leads to him who is truly God, became subject to the lost and evil throngs. It was scarcely aware that it had gone after pestilential enemies as gods and friends' (De Eccles. Hier., c. 3, p. 3 [2]). St. Justin says that `the human race . . . fell through Adam into death and the deception and seduction of the serpent' (Dial. cum Triph.). But the clearest statements relative to our proposition are the many places in St. Augustine where he comments on and explains the two passages of St. Paul that we have quoted. For example, he says: `Moreover, this clear and fully authoritative opinion is contained in the sacred canonical books. The Apostle proclaims: "Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned." Thus, it cannot be said that Adam's sin did not harm sinners, when Scripture says: "because all men sinned"' (De peccator. merit. et remiss., 3, 7). `For sin came into the world through one human being, and death through sin, and so death spread to all because all sinned. Through the evil will of one human being all sinned in him when all were that one human being. From him therefore they have each contracted original sin' (De nupt. et concup., 2, 5). `Cease to proclaim vain things. All those who were not yet born could certainly do neither good nor evil through their own wills, but they could sin in the one human being in whom they were present by reason of the seed. When he with his own will perpetrated the great sin and disorder, he changed and damaged both himself and human nature. Understand if you can, but if not, believe' (Op. imperf. contra Jul., 4, 104. Cf. De peccator. et remiss., 1, 10).

(389) Job 32: [8 (Douai)].

(390) Hom. in Psal., 48.

(391) `When the Maker wished to manifest the Word, therefore, he formed this single animal into a human being from visible and invisible nature. The body of the human being is formed from matter previously produced, and the Creator breathes into it the breath which Scripture calls the image of God and the intellectual soul. He places a large world, as it were, on our little earth' (Orat. 42 [45], quae est orat. 2 de Pascha).

(392) `The MATTER of the creature is first prepared and his FORM designed to show an exemplar of outstanding beauty. Then the Creator makes a nature similar to himself and like him in its in actions (De hominis opificio, c. 3).

(393) De fide orthod., bk. 2, c. 12.

(394) Gen 2: [2].